



/ 

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THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF 

THE NEGRO 


A SPEECH AT FANEUIL HALL 

BY 

Hon. albert E. PILLSBURY 








BOSTON 

Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street 

1903 









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The following speech was made at a great meeting in Fan- 
euil Hall, Boston, on the Lincoln anniversary, February 12 
1903, to an audience composed largely of colored people. 

With the consent of the speaker it is published with a view 
to furnishing accurate information to American men and 
women who regard human rights as paramount to markets. 
It is a clear, dispassionate statement of the situation; and its 
ringing demand that disfranchisement of the negro “ must be 
resisted by all lawful means,” if the white man’s charter of 
freedom is to be preserved, is a trumpet-call to black men and 
white men alike to stand for the supremacy of Federal power 
in every State of the Union. 

BUTLER R. WILSON. 

34 School Street, Boston, Mass., 

June, 1903. 


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THE DISFRANCHISEMENT OF THE NEGRO. 


Fellow-citizens: — 

There was a time when a call to the people of Boston to 
consider a great question of political rights would have 
crowded Faneuil Hall to the doors, and the white men would 
have come first. Have the white men of Boston bequeathed 
Faneuil Hall to the black men.? Have the sons of Hancock, 
Adams, Otis, and Quincy abandoned the Cradle of Liberty to 
the sons of Ham.? If they have, this meeting shows that it 
has passed into no unworthy hands; for Faneuil Hall was 
built and dedicated to liberty, and we are here to-night in 
her name. 

Allusion has been made to the absence of the mayor. I 
did not come here to stand beside the mayor or any other dis¬ 
tinguished man. I did not come to patronize you, but to 
take care of myself. There are some of us, at least, who un¬ 
derstand that until every black man’s rights are secure, no 
white man’s rights are safe. And I wish you would not 
shout, but listen. I do not want to make you shout, but to 
make you think. 

In order to understand clearly the situation which this 
meeting is called to consider, it is necessary to look back to 
the time when the controversy began. One of the fatal con¬ 
cessions made to slavery in the Constitution was that three- 
fifths of all the slaves should be counted in the basis of rep¬ 
resentation in Congress and in the Electoral College. In the 
free states, only the man could vote. In the slave states, 
the man and the slave-property voted. This gave the slave 
states an undue and unjust share of political power, which 
was always a subject of jealousy and recrimination between 
the sections, and a source of danger to the Union. 

After slavery had done its utmost to wreck the government, 
and had finally perished by the sword, the first thing the 



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people did was to write into the Constitution the Thirteenth 
Amendment, declaring that slavery shall never again exist 
within the domain of the United States; and the next thing 
was to write into the Fourteenth Amendment a declaration 
that all persons born in the United States are citizens, and 
that, if a state shall deny or abridge the right of citizens to 
vote, its representation in Congress shall be cut down in the 
proportion in which the right is denied. This was supposed 
to put an end for all time to the political danger, not to say 
iniquity, of unequal representation of the states in Congress 
and in the election of president. 

In 1870 they saw that it was necessary to go farther, and 
by the Fifteenth Amendment they absolutely forbade the 
states or the United States to deny or abridge the right of 
citizens to vote on account of race, color, or previous condi¬ 
tion of servitude. This does not forbid a state to discrim¬ 
inate against ignorance, or vice, or crime, or even against 
poverty. It forbids discrimination against the negro because 
of his color alone, and it forbids nothing more. All illiterate 
men, all degraded men, even all poor men, can be denied the 
ballot, if that is what is wanted, without violating the Federal 
Constitution. 

The South received the constitutional amendments with a 
sort of sullen submission so long as Federal bayonets were in 
sight. When the Federal troops were withdrawn from the 
South in 1877, the whites proceeded to strip the negro of his 
political rights, by mobbing and shooting him if he tried to 
exercise them. This disturbed some sensitive minds at the 
North; and, what was of more consequence, it made political 
capital for the Republican party. Accordingly, they looked 
for a better device, and found one. For shooting, they sub¬ 
stituted cheating. The tissue ballot was as sure as the bullet, 
and it looked less offensive. They made no secret of this. 
The Charleston man who claimed to have invented them 
showed me his collection of fraudulent ballots in 1880, and 
boasted of the success of the scheme. 

The Republican party kept up the attempt to vindicate the 


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laws and maintain the political rights of all citizens, irrespec¬ 
tive of color, until the so-called “force bill” of 1890 had to 
be abandoned, because it was evident that public sentiment in 
the North was less resolute in support of it than was the 
public sentiment of the South against it, and that to press it 
would create “ unpleasantness ” with our Southern brethren. 

The South took this as the signal that the North had aban¬ 
doned the negro. Then they threw off the mask, and began 
openly and on a large scale the process of his complete disfran¬ 
chisement by constitutional provisions. Mississippi led the 
way. South Carolina followed, then Louisiana, and Alabama, 
and Virginia, and so on. The country has looked on with 
indifference while the negro has been stripped of his consti¬ 
tutional rights, and a state of things established so much 
worse, politically, than before slavery was abolished, that 
while but three-fifths of the negroes were then counted in the 
basis of representation, they now are all counted, while the 
white men do the voting and exercise all the political power. 
In the former slave states there was in 1900 a colored pop¬ 
ulation, in round numbers, of eight millions, calling for forty 
representatives in Congress. These forty representatives 
are sitting there, making laws to govern us, though few if any 
of them have a constitutional right to their seats. In the five 
states which have already disfranchised the negro by their 
constitutions there is a colored population, in round numbers, 
of four millions, practically excluded from the suffrage, while 
twenty representatives are sitting and voting in Congress in 
their right. 

No reasonable man would expect any community to submit 
to be governed by an ignorant or corrupt negro vote. If 
they could plead this in excuse of what they have done, the 
case would be far different. They cannot plead it. They 
have a constitutional right to discriminate against ignorance 
or corruption, and to exclude every ignorant or corrupt man, 
white or black, from the suffrage. This they do not wish 
to do, and have never tried to do. Their prejudice is not 
against degradation, but against color. They have no con- 


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stitutional right to exclude the ignorant and degraded negro 
from the suffrage, while admitting the ignorant and degraded 
white man. Yet this is precisely what they undertook to do, 
and what they have done. 

Now let us make one thing clear. There is not and never 
was in negro suffrage, at least since the few years immedi¬ 
ately after the war, any danger, or any question, of negro 
domination in the South. The negro vote had ceased to 
be a controlling factor in any southern state years before 
the first disfranchising constitution was adopted. The pre¬ 
tence that there is or ever was such a danger is an absolutely 
false pretence. The natural allegiance of the negroes was to 
their old masters,— an allegiance so strong that the masters 
have always boasted of it. If they had accepted the negro as 
a citizen, with the rights of a citizen, they could and would 
have secured his political allegiance, or at least divided it 
between the political parties in such proportions that there 
would still have been white rule in every southern state and 
very likely in every county and town. The difficulty was 
that they would not accept him as a citizen. As a negro, 
they have no objection to him. Indeed, as a negro he is 
indispensable to them. And one of the leading reasons why 
they will not accept him as a citizen, as they openly avow, 
is that it will impair his usefulness as a laborer. They mean 
to reduce him, and they are reducing him, to a state of servi¬ 
tude as complete actually, if not legally, as his former state 
of slavery. The old axiom of the slave-owners was that 
“capital should own labor.” This is practically what they 
are now aiming at, and what they are likely to accomplish if 
we stand indifferent. Indeed, it is already being done. Read 
the peonage laws of Alabama and other . states, if you 
doubt it. 

The president, a man of convictions and of a courage some¬ 
times misguided, seems disposed to do something for his ten 
millions of colored constituents ; but he is hampered by polit¬ 
ical complications, and instead of bringing the whole power 
of the government to bear to enforce the supremacy of the 





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laws, in which we are all alike concerned, he has thus far con¬ 
tented himself with vindicating the right of the negro to a 
share of the Federal offices. This is of minor importance, 
and this alone will do the negro no good. The secretary of 
war, supposed to speak for the administration, is reported to 
have declared the other day that the attempt to confer the 
suffrage upon the negro is a failure and must be abandoned. 
A well-known newspaper writer, commenting on the secre¬ 
tary’s speech, says that of course it is a failure and must be 
abandoned, because it was never anything more than a po¬ 
litical scheme to perpetuate the power of the Republican 
party in the South, with neither reason nor public sentiment 
behind it. 

Both of these gentlemen are wrong in their facts and in 
their conclusions. The Fifteenth Amendment was not a 
mere partisan device. The reasons which led to its adoption 
are part of the history of the country, and the assertion that 
it was a scheme to perpetuate the power of the Republican 
party betrays a discreditable ignorance of our history. Some 
of the men who made it, notably our great fellow-citizen 
Governor Boutwell, are still living. They know better than 
these statesmen of yesterday, and they give personal testi¬ 
mony of the facts. The Fifteenth Amendment was adopted 
by a generous people, fresh from the memories of the war, 
in part as a measure of justice to the negro, who had stood 
by us and fought for us, and who, wi thout ^the ballot, was at 
the mercy of his masters lately in rebellion. Do the men 
who talk so loudly nowadays about “the honor of the coun¬ 
try ” deny that this was a good reason ? More than this, it 
was adopted as a measure of high political wisdom, in view 
of the fact, which a few far-sighted statesmen saw then, and 
sooner or later the blindest of us will come to see, that free 
institutions can stand only on the basis of equal rights, and 
that no great body of citizens can be defrauded of their 
rights without corrupting the whole political body and putting 
in peril the rights of all the rest. And, finally, it was adopted 
to make impossible the very thing which the Fourteenth 








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Amendment left open, and which has now happened,— the 
actual exclusion of millions of citizens from the suffrage, 
while those who exclude them retain the political power to 
represent them in Congress and in the choice of presidents. 
Some of the northern apologists for this crime are fond of 
saying that President Lincoln never would have favored 
negro suffrage. One of the last declarations of Lincoln, 
whose prophetic vision had already forecast this issue, was 
that negro suffrage would have to come, on grounds both 
of justice and expediency. Have we abandoned Abraham 
Lincoln to follow Elihu Root ? 

If any man supposes that we can safely submit to have the 
fundamental law of the United States defied and set at 
naught by disfranchising the negro race, he is not fit to be 
intrusted with political power. The general reasons against 
it are enough, but let me put a concrete case. Some day 
there will be a presidential election so close that it will turn 
upon a handful of electoral votes. Each state has a num¬ 
ber of electoral votes equal to the whole number of sena¬ 
tors and representatives in Congress “ to which the state 
may be entitled!' The Republican party, in order to re¬ 
tain power, will then be obliged to raise, and of course 
will raise, the question of the right of the electors of the 
states which have disfranchised the negro to vote in the 
choice of president. We shall then have this issue precipi¬ 
tated upon us under the most difficult and exciting conditions, 
and the result will be a convulsion that will shake the gov¬ 
ernment to its foundations. The dispute of 1876 was but a 
passing breeze in comparison with the storm that may burst 
upon us if we leave the question to be dealt with in the 
fiercest heat of party passions, with the possession of the 
government at stake. 

In the interest and for the safety of all of us alike, of 
white men no less than of black men, the attempt to dis¬ 
franchise the negro must be resisted by every lawful means. 
The first means at hand is to obtain, if possible, a conclusive 
judicial decision of the question. Reduction of representa- 


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tion is not to be resorted to unless the other remedy fails, as 
this will be taken to recognize disfranchisement as accom¬ 
plished and unalterable. I have always believed that if one of 
these disfranchising constitutions can be brought fairly before 
the Supreme Court at Washington, it will be declared void. 
But the diabolical ingenuity with which these charters of 
crime are framed makes this a difficult task. Indeed, they 
are framed almost as much to make it impossible to raise the 
question, as for the main purpose of disfranchisement. Take, 
for example, that of Louisiana. It provides, first, that any 
citizen may vote if he can read and write. Next, if he can¬ 
not read and write, he may vote if he has paid taxes on ^300 
worth of property. Next,— and in this clause is the trail of 
the serpent,— if he cannot read and write and has not the 
taxable property, he may vote if he or his father or grand¬ 
father was entitled to vote January i, 1867, ^.nd if he 
registers within six months. This is the notorious “grand¬ 
father ” clause, invented for the purpose of letting in every 
poor and illiterate white man and keeping out every j^egro. 
The Word was immediately passed among the poor and illiter¬ 
ate whites that they must register at once, and presumably 
they did. Before the negroes found out the situation, the 
time for registration under the grandfather clause had ex¬ 
pired. But this, indeed, made little difference to them. 
They would not have been allowed to register under it, be¬ 
cause they or their fathers or grandfathers had not become 
entitled to vote in January, 1867. And the lower court in 
Louisiana has held that a negro’s petition for mandamus to 
compel the election officers to register him is ineffectual, as 
the time has expired for registration under the grandfather 
clause, and that he cannot raise the question of the validity 
of the scheme as a whole, because the new constitution com¬ 
pletely superseded the old system, and the election officers 
must obey it according to its terms, if valid, and, if not valid, 
there are no election officers who can be compelled to do 
anything, as they all hold under the new constitution. By 
such juggling is the power of the United States defied and 


Plbl^irs^ 






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set at naught. And misfortune has ordained that thus far no 
case properly framed to raise the main question and force a 
decision upon it has reached the Supreme Court at Washing¬ 
ton. No such case should be taken there on any side issue, 
nor any that can only put another obstacle in the way of a 
real decision. 

There are many people, and some friends of thq^egro race, 
who are not disposed to insist upon his right to vote; believ¬ 
ing that he does not need the ballot, and that the controversy 
will tend to make his condition wor^ rather than better. 
There are those who believe that the negro will prosper if he 
gets education, especially industrial education. There are 
those who believe that he will prosper if he gets property. 
There are those who believe that he will prosper if he gets 
the ballot. I believe that to prosper he must have all three, 
and must have the ballot first, on equal terms with the white 
man. Under a government based on popular suffrage the 
ballot is the only weapon that will protect any man in his 
personal rights. Thepegro must work for his bread. In all 
the industries competition is sharp, and is constantly increas- 
in^yPut two workmen into the same field of labor, one 
^fth the ballot in his hand and the other without it, and you 
know Ivhat will become of the latter. He cannot compete 
for a livelihood upon equal terms. He will be reduced to a 
state of practical subjection and servitude, to which we cannot 
afford to have him reduced, if there were no other reason 
against it. The right to vote is, in this country, “ the right 
preservative of all rights.” Take it away from any man, and 
you leave him in a state of servitude. Take it away from the 
negro, and you leave him a slave, to whom every white man 
may dictate the terms on which he shall live. Take it away 
from the negro while retaining the power to sit in Congress 
and make laws for us in his right, and you leave us all slaves, 
and the white men who submit to it the meanest of all. 

Let no man and no newspaper misunderstand or misrepre¬ 
sent this,— that we do not stand for the right of any igno¬ 
rant, corrupt, or degraded man, black or white, to vote. 


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Exclude them all, if you will. The Federal Constitution 
does not forbid it. The Federal Constitution does forbid, 
and justice, humanity, and prudence all forbid, that race or 
color alone shall be a test of fitness or unfitness for the 
ballot. We insist, m our own right no less than in yours, 
that in every state of the Union black men and white men 
shall be admitted or excluded, no matter which, on absolutely 
equal terms. ^There has been and will be no complaint of 
any state tha^t applies its tests, however severe, to all men 
alike. This is all the J^gro asks, and this is all we ask, for 
him or for ourselves. And if we take anything less, we 
confess ourselves unfit even for the remnant of our rights 
that our masters leave to us. 

The attempt to maintain or to tolerate among us a subject 
class of millions, entitled to the rights of citizens but denied 
the exercise of them, is capable of destroying the government. 
The attempt to disfranchise this class, while retaining and 
exercising over us the political power belonging to their 
numbers, is a crime against /every white man in the nation 
no less than against every negro. The question cannot be 
put down or put aside. Trusts, tariffs, conflicts of labor and 
capital, may come and go, but this question will remain. It 
cannot be settled until it is settled upon the fundamental prin¬ 
ciple of justice; and the time to settle it is while it can be 
done peaceably, without waiting for a crisis. The movement 
must go on, until the rights of every citizen are as secure as 
the rights of any other, and until the supremacy of Federal 
power is vindicated in every state of the Union. The move¬ 
ment must go on for our security, if not for yours. It was 
Lincoln who said to his countrymen in 1857, “ your 
greedy chase to_ make profit of the ^tgro, beware lest you 
cancel and tear to pieces the white man’s charter of freedom.” 
Have they forgotten the price they had to pay to save the 
white man’s charter ? Every dollar of it, and every drop of 
blood, was the price of injustice to the negro. Shall we pay 
the price again .? — or shall we act on that prophetic admoni¬ 
tion, and act in time ? 























JUL 20 1903 



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